y felt no disposition to depart. Gillian's
attractions had already fired the inflammable heart of the apprentice,
who could not withdraw his gaze from her; and so ardent were his looks,
and so expressive his gestures of admiration, that ere long he
succeeded, to his no small delight, in attracting her notice in return.

Gillian Greenford was a bright-eyed, fair-haired young creature; light,
laughing, radiant; with cheeks soft as peach bloom, and beautifully
tinged with red, lips carnation-hued, and teeth white as pearls. Her
parti-coloured, linsey-woolsey petticoats looped up on one side
disclosed limbs with no sort of rustic clumsiness about them; but, on
the contrary, a particularly neat formation both of foot and ankle. Her
scarlet bodice, which, like the lower part of her dress, was decorated
with spangles, bugles, and tinsel ornaments of various kinds,--very
resplendent in the eyes of the surrounding swains, as well as in those
of Dick Taverner,--her bodice, we say, spanning a slender waist, was
laced across, while the snowy kerchief beneath it did not totally
conceal a very comely bust. A wreath of natural flowers was twined very
gracefully within her waving and almost lint-white locks, and in her
hand she held a shepherdess's crook. Such was the Beauty of Tottenham,
and the present Queen of the May. Dick Taverner thought her little less
than angelic, and there were many besides who shared in his opinion.

If Dick had been thus captivated on the sudden, Jocelyn had not escaped
similar fascination from another quarter. It befel in this way:

At an open oriel window, in one of the ancient and picturesque
habitations before described as facing the green, stood a young maiden,
whose beauty was of so high an order, and so peculiar a character, that
it at once attracted and fixed attention. Such, at least, was the effect
produced by it on Jocelyn. Shrinking from the public gaze, and,
perhaps, from some motive connected with religious scruples, scarcely
deeming it right to be a spectator of the passing scene, this fair
maiden was so placed as to be almost screened from general view. Yet it
chanced that Jocelyn, from the circumstance of being on horseback, and
from his position, was able to command a portion of the room in which
she stood; and he watched her for some minutes before she became aware
she was the object of his regards. When, at length, she perceived that
his gaze was steadily fixed upon her, a deep blush su